Reading & Writing In The Disciplines

Reading & Writing In The Disciplines is a professional development course to help grade 6-12 subject area teachers develop student literacy and communication skills in mathematics, history/social studies, science, and English. It is an eight-unit course divided into two parts. The first is for teachers in all disciplines and provides an overview of disciplinary literacy. In the second, teachers select a discipline and focus on its literacy demands and strategies for preparing students to be literate in it.

Videos and interactives are included within the units. In addition, all 88 Media Resources can be browsed as a whole and filtered by discipline, grade, media type, and key topics.

A Course Guide (PDF
1.6 MB, 42 pgs.) is available for individual teachers and workshop facilitators.

The course includes a glossary, a comprehensive bibliography of print and Internet sources and recommended reading for each discipline, and a link to Teacher Talk, an email discussion list for Reading & Writing in the Disciplines participants.

Part I: Get Started with Disciplinary Literacy has four units. Unit 3: Reading: Big Ideas explores components of reading comprehension that relate to learning across disciplines. Sections cover comprehension instruction, text structures, strategies of proficient readers, vocabulary, and close reading.

Part II: Select A Discipline provides four comparable units for each disciple. As an example, Unit 3 in Mathematics is Writing in Mathematics. The unit covers what are the writing demands of math classes, why writing is important, writing as formative assessment, the importance of small-group and whole-class discussion, instructional practices, and what does the research literature say.

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